


Koi No Ishi

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-06
Updated: 2009-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, they traded: Adam's heart of stone has been replaced by a laughing silver fish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Koi No Ishi

**Author's Note:**

> In the darkness, once he's filtered out the sound of his own breath, his own heartbeat, when there is nothing but the black and his memories, Adam goes a little more mad with every moment.

There is a space in his chest, warm and wet, salt water lapping against his ribs and bathing his lungs. Anchored on the left side there is a fish, a moony pale thing with a tail and fins that flap weakly through the brine of his blood. Adam had a heart once, a rocky lump, almost useless. Then one morning in its place he rose and found a carp had taken its place seamlessly; what had been still and cold was now alive, however elusive, however slippery.

There is a Carp, out there, and he carries the burden of that stony heart that once was Adam's. He deserves the burden of it, deserves to be crushed under its weight, because in the dark and silent grave what good does even the most silvery fish do? It shines no light, it offers no companionship-- it merely swims its lazy circles, over and over, the same aching lap of his chest that it makes every time he thinks enough to rouse it.

His Carp. His burden, the stone on the face of his grave, his darkness and solitude-- and his rescue.

Sound, and then light, too bright even through Adam's eyelids. After the darkness, everything is blinding, but most of all Hiro's moon of a face, broad and pale and timeless above Adam, a little sadder, a little more wary, but still his Carp, his Koi, his heart.

"Hiro, you son of a bitch," he says, and grabs Hiro by the throat. Just before they blink out-- and oh, Adam knows what to look for, that sudden squint of concentration-- just before then, he sees something dark and stony in the deep wells of Hiro's eyes, and he knows for certain: as he's borne this Carp in his chest, the fish where his heart should be, so has Hiro borne the stony weight of Adam's heart where the silverquick laughing fish once swam behind his breastbone.

Hiro squints, and the world around them fades into stillness.

"What you did to me," Adam starts, furious and low, and Hiro simply looks at him, still and calm as pebbles in a fish pond, until Adam blinks and begins again. "How could you have left me there..."

"What you did made it necessary," Hiro interjects softly, and his hands are firm on Adam's wrists, his cherry-blossom mouth set in an unhappy line. "I never meant for any of this, Kensei. Believe me."

"How can I believe you, Hiro? Intentions don't--" Adam shuts himself up, knowing that the light, the air, the world around him are making him intoxicated and incautious. He'll incriminate himself in a heartbeat to have his trust in Hiro restored for just a moment, just long enough to let the koi swim back to the chest where it belongs instead of circling endlessly within him.

"We have both done terrible things to each other." Hiro has always been nothing less than earnest, no matter the situation, and in this not-quite-apology, the recognition of hurt dealt and hurt received, Adam can feel the frozen air around them bending to hear the ring of truth. "But now... I need your help. The world is in danger."

"Again? And not from me, this time," Adam says, voice thick with irony, and it's something almost rapturous to watch Hiro's solemnity crumble, to see the point where Hiro-the-hero becomes Hiro-the-aching-heart, the water carving at the heart of stone he carries.

"Kensei. I need you," he says, and the words are not the same, the meaning is not the same. The hands on Adam's wrists might as well be iron, for all that he could break Hiro's grip, but the real bonds are in the slump of Hiro's shoulders, the shadows under his eyes, every quirk of his beloved Carp that he had so many endless hours to replay in his mind's eye, every memory a crumb to stir the koi in his chest.

This didn't happen, not in Japan, though Hiro watched Kensei's movement like a starving bird following the flick of a fin under still water; this didn't happen, though more than once Kensei had looked through Yaeko's hair, past her perfect cheek, and misunderstood the pain in Hiro's eyes. But here, with time held in the palm of Hiro's gentle hand, Adam's breath catches as he bends his head.

After an uncountable number of lifetimes in that coffin, Hiro is impossibly, vibrantly _real_. His lips only look like sakura petals; they are chapped, and his mouth is dry, and Adam shakes his hands free of Hiro's, plunges his hands into thick black hair and takes, needy for the love he betrayed centuries ago, dying figuratively for who and what he died literally so many times for, Hiro and his faith, his Carp, his koi.

Within Adam's chest, a moonlight carp flicks its tail, lashes him with regret; outside of his immortal skin, Hiro's fingers run over Adam's cheek, water over stone, a silent wash of forgiveness.


End file.
